Story Time with the Man Who Oversaw SEAL Team Six

You’d think that William H. McRaven, the former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, would be most famous for directing Operation Neptune Spear, the 2011 raid that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden. But he sees it differently. McRaven, a sixty-nine-year-old retired four-star admiral, said the other day, “I’m best known for telling people to make their bed.”

McRaven was at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island to talk about his second children’s book, a sequel to his 2021 title, “Make Your Bed with Skipper the Seal.” That volume was a spinoff of a commencement address he gave in 2014, at the University of Texas, sharing wisdom gained during basic training to become a Navy SEAL: “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” The speech went viral and became the basis for McRaven’s first book, “Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life . . . and Maybe the World.” The second kids’ title, “Be a Hero with Skipper the Seal,” is based on McRaven’s book “The Hero Code: What It Takes to Rise to the Occasion.”

He was visiting the aquarium with his thirty-four-year-old daughter, Kelly Marie McRaven, who co-wrote the new book. In “Be a Hero,” Skipper assembles a team of other animals—Caring Cow, Hopeful Hare, Persevering Penguin, etc.—at the behest of the President, a bald eagle in a blue suit and a rep tie. “Kelly contributed most of the rhymes,” the Admiral said. The alliteration he owes to his father, who used to tell him bedtime stories about a character called Elmer the Elf.

Kelly, who wore a black dress accessorized with a colorful scarf, lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and works in national security (“I’ll leave it at that,” she said). “My favorite character is the Forgiving Frog,” she said. “He is the one that really demonstrates one of the greatest values of being a hero.”

The Admiral, who had on a gray sweater over a collared shirt, prefers the Giving Gorilla. “Not sure why, other than he’s the biggest character in the book,” he said. He himself is more of a busy beaver. “I’m on the road four or five days a week,” he said. McRaven, who lives in Austin, is a geopolitical adviser at the financial firm Lazard, sits on the boards of several nonprofits, teaches national-security decision-making at the University of Texas’s L.B.J. School of Public Affairs, and writes poetry.

Father and daughter made their way to an indoor viewing area, where a trio of California sea lions slid back and forth through the water. “Look at how hydrodynamic they are,” the Admiral said, as one glided by upside down.

In the shark exhibit, the McRavens strolled through a long glass tunnel that afforded closeup views of marine life. In Skipper the Seal’s universe, sharks are bullies. “Whether they are the sharks in your classroom or the sharks in your boardroom, you’re going to have to deal with bullies, and you can’t always run away from them,” the Admiral said. Asked what kinds of bullies he’d endured, he said, “The enemy.”

He sketched out the plot of the new book. “It starts off with a shark bullying somebody, and, of course, the Courageous Cat comes forward and stops the shark,” he said. “But, at the end, it’s the Forgiving Frog that forgives the bully.” He mentioned how, as a commander in Afghanistan, he’d apologized for a civilian-casualty situation—“a terribly egregious incident.” The takeaway: “Don’t have so much hubris that you can’t say, ‘Look, I messed up, and I need to go make this right.’ ”

The bullying talk brought to mind President Trump, whom the Admiral took on last year in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, comparing him to “a disturbed 15-year-old boy.” (McRaven was approached by Kamala Harris’s campaign as a possible running mate, but demurred: “I was flattered to be considered.”) Now that Trump is back in office, the Admiral was more diplomatic. “I didn’t vote for him. But he’s the rightful President of the United States, and, from the military standpoint, we have an obligation to follow the orders of the Commander-in-Chief,” he said. “As long as they are lawful orders.” ♦